In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

17 Jan

[Başak Çalı is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Human Rights at the University College London] This post is the second in a series of three. Last week I suggested that comparing the Von Hannover (2) Case of 2012 and the Fatullayev Case of 2010, both of which concern reviews of freedom of expression decisions given by supreme domestic courts, is a good way of understanding the variable standard of judicial review developed by the European Court of Human Rights.

The Von Hannover Cases (1) and (2)

The Von Hannover (2) Case was the second appearance of Princess Caroline of Monaco before the Strasbourg Court, arguing that the German press had violated her right to privacy. In the first Von Hannover Case of 2004, Princess Caroline advanced the argument that given that she does not hold a public office or have any public functions, the continuous publication of pictures depicting her private life in the German press violated her right to privacy, and the German Courts had failed to protect her. In the first case, the Strasbourg Court found a violation. In the second case it did not. From Princess Caroline’s perspective, this outcome is odd. The explanation lies in how the Strasbourg Court defines its standard of judicial review of domestic courts. 
|
16 Jan

Okay, I'm exaggerating.  But only slightly.  As Wells Bennett notes today at Lawfare, Judge Pohl has rejected al-Nashiri's contention that the US and al-Qaeda were not engaged in hostilities (an armed conflict in IHL terms) at the time of the acts alleged in his indictment -- primarily the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 -- thereby depriving the military commission...

|
15 Jan

As Peggy noted a couple of weeks ago, the international-law blogosphere lost one of its most important collective voices when IntLawGrrls closed up shop.  Fortunately, one of the most important individual voices within IntLawGrrls is back blogging -- Diane Marie Amann, who holds the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law at my former academic home, the University of...

|
15 Jan

I argued yesterday that the Security Council cannot refer a situation to the ICC under Art. 13(b) of the Rome Statute while exempting nationals of non-States Parties from the Court's jurisdiction.  Jennifer Trahan disagrees: I primarily disagree with Kevin’s first point.  While it may be objectionable to have an exemption of nationals of non-States Parties, I actually think that the UN...

|
11 Jan

[Başak Çalı is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Human Rights at the University College London] This post is the first in a series of three. The relationship between the highest domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights has been subject to much debate in the past ten years in Europe. Some of this debate focuses on the backlash against the...

|
07 Jan

[Eugene Kontorovich is Professor of Law at Northwestern Law. This post is cross-posted at The Volokh Conspiracy] In response to my post about Turkey's settlements, Kevin Jon Heller argues that from the perspective of International Criminal Court liability for "indirectly...

|
06 Jan

Eugene Kontorovich argues today at Volokh Conspiracy that Israel could minimize the likelihood of an ICC investigation into its transfer of Israeli civilians into the West Bank by emphasizing Turkey's similar transfer of Turkish civilians into Northern Cyprus, which it has been illegally occupying for more than four decades.  Here are the key paragraphs: Cyprus was a state with clear borders...

|
06 Jan

The (short and unassuming) essay is forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of International Adjudication, which is being edited by Cesare Romano, Karen Alter, and Yuval Shany and should be published by OUP this year.  Here is the abstract: The role of the international prosecutor is uniquely challenging. Unlike domestic prosecutors, who normally have the material resources to prosecute all of the serious crimes...

|
31 Dec

The most common reaction to my post on Newtown and the drone program has been to point out that there is a difference between killing in peacetime and killing during war -- that we are both legally and morally more willing to accept the loss of innocent life in the latter, even if the loss in both can be considered...

|
30 Dec

There's been an interesting debate in the blogosphere recently about why people find the murder of 20 young children at Newtown so much more horrible than the routine killing of children in Yemen and Pakistan by U.S. drones.  Glenn Greenwald and Falguni Sheth, a philosophy professor at Hampshire College, find the selective outrage indefensible.  Ben Wittes and the Telegraph's Brendan...

|